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Friday, October 18, 2013

Sarah and the First Get

A guest post by Y. Bloch

Was our founding matriarch the world's first divorce attorney? Maybe not, but the biblical record is intriguing.

The Talmud (Megilla
14a) identifies Sarah as the first of seven biblical prophetesses,
proving this from a verse in this week's Torah portion: "She perceived
with the Holy Spirit, as it says (Gen. 21:12), 'In all that Sarah tells
you, listen to her voice.'" But what command of Sarah is it that
receives this divine imprimatur?

Therefore she said to
Abraham, “Drive out this handmaid, along with her son, for the son of
this handmaid shall not be an heir with my son Isaac.” (v. 10)
So
Abraham rose early in the morning and took bread and a skin of water and
gave to Hagar, putting on her shoulder; and along with the boy, he sent
her away. And she departed and wandered about in the wilderness of
Beersheba. (v. 14)

No word on the cat.

The two terms used here are, respectively, garash (drive out) and shalach
(send away). Though the subject of this passage is supposedly Hagar's
son (probably Ishmael, though he is not named; Midrashic sources deduce
his age to be 17 or 27), these verbs refer directly to her, while the
boy is thrown in with the preposition et. In biblical Hebrew, garash and shalachare
the terms used for divorce (cf. Lev. 21:7, Deut. 24:1), and this is
exactly what seems to be happening between Abraham and Hagar--at Sarah's
behest!

But don't take my wordiness for it. In the Midrash
(Pirkei de-R. Eliezer 29), Judah b. Tema states: "Sarah said to Abraham,
'Write a bill of divorce (get gerushin) for the handmaid, and
send away this handmaid." In the Targum (Pseudo-Jonathan), "He sent her
away" is rendered "He dismissed her with a bill (gitta)."

This
changes the tenor of the line, Sarah's final words and last appearance
(alive) in Scripture. What could have been vindictive and vicious is
instead virtuous: Sarah, a woman who has been abducted twice by foreign
rulers and hid her marriage for years to safeguard her family, wants
Hagar to be free and clear. This fits in with the Midrashic view of
Sarah (Gen. Rabba 39:14, 84:4) as a "maker of souls" who ministers to
the women drawn in by Abraham's preaching. She must have heard some
pretty horrific stories over the years, and it makes sense that she did
not want to make a sad situation worse.

Abraham's Farewell to Ishmael, George Segal, 1987

As
God confirms, it is time for Ishmael to leave his father's house, and
his mother needs to go with him (as we see a few verses later, when she
finds him a wife from her homeland, Egypt). But Sarah orders Abraham to
do it with a get, unambiguously. Hagar will not be an aguna, a woman chained to a man who refuses to release her from the bonds of marriage.

The
sad fact is that in the Ancient Near East, there were many options for
men who wanted to dispose of inconvenient wives. In Esther 2:14, we see
that Ahasuerus maintains a harem for his "used" girls, should he ever
want to invite them back. That's quite a few centuries after Abraham,
but his own brother had both a wife and a concubine, as we see in the
next chapter of Genesis. Concubines, of course, could be taken and
dismissed practically at will, without documents of marriage or divorce.
A darker possibility would be to sell Hagar back into slavery, an
option so real that the Torah expressly forbids doing so with a Hebrew
handmaiden (Ex. 21:8) or a war bride (Deut. 21:14). So, while divorcing
Hagar may seem cruel, it does appear to be the least bad option.

One cannot help but think of this in light of the recent case of get extortion in New York. I have no sympathy for a recalcitrant husband who refuses to give his wife a get;
it is spousal abuse, plain and simple. However, that does not justify
kidnapping, racketeering and torture. The idea that a good aim and
rabbinical approval somehow justifies outrageous felonies makes me
wonder: what does this mean for all those good men embezzling funds for
their yeshivot? Are they too entitled to hazard pay, in the tens of thousands, for their aggressively illegal "righteousness"?

However, I understand the psychological need to justify the criminality: it keeps one's mind off the real plight of agunot,
which is not only a social problem, but a theological one. If our Torah
truly cares for the oppressed, how can it be rendered powerless in the
face of this exquisite cruelty?

Are there halakhic solutions out
there? I believe that there are, but more importantly, I believe that
there must be. Rabbi Dr. Zev Farber outlines many of them in his
excellent piece, "No Agunah Left Behind."
We can quibble over which halakhic mechanisms to employ, but not the
pressing need for action--not violence, not crime, but true advocacy,
initiative and bravery.

Finally, let us consider this. According to the Midrash (Tanhuma, Hayei Sara
4), the final verses of Proverbs are Abraham's eulogy of Sarah. In that
context, we find (31:26), "She has opened her mouth in wisdom and the
law of compassion (torat hesed) is upon her tongue." Torat hesed--what a revolutionary concept!

If it relates to Jews, Judaism, holidays, Midrash,Torah, halacha or anything similar, I probably have a post on it. And if I have a post on it, I probably have a good comment thread with great reader-provided information, too.

Try a search and see for yourself. If you can't find what you're looking for ask me.

Quotes

רֹאשׁ דְּבָרְךָ אֱמֶת קוֹרֵא מֵרֹאשׁ דּוֹר וָדוֹר עַם דּוֹרֶשְׁךָ דְּרֹשׁ
Your chief word is "truth"; You've called it out since the beginning. In each generation people interpret You [for themselves] and find [their own] meaning.

You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you odd. -Flannery O'Connor

“When in the afterglow of religious insight I can see a way that is good for all humans as it is for me—I will know it is His way.” - R. Abraham Joshua Heschel

I don't accept at all the quite popular argument that the press is responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. The monarchy's responsible for the monarchy's recent troubles. To blame the press is the old thing of blaming the messenger for the message. -Anthony Holden

Said behind my back

"...he's trying to show that there are other facets to Orthodox Judaism. That we don't all think one way and vote one way. And he's occasionally entertaining when he's not being mean-spirited" [PsychoToddler]"

"He's witty. He's funny. He appreciates the ridiculous in life, and has no qualms about telling you when he thinks that you're being a moron" [Cara]

" I'm pretty sure [DovBear] is a really great guy who just wants to be able to ask questions and talk about things without the fear of someone claiming he's off the derech or on his way there." [Chaviva]